A Profile of Diane Wilson on Dec. 4, 2005

Yes, the day before her arrest at a Republican fundraiser, Diane Wilson is profiled by Stephanie Hillier in this article at IndiaNest:

When she learned in 1989 that her tiny Calhoun County in South Texas – with 15,000 residents – was named as the most polluted county in the US in a report of the US Environment Protection Agency’s Federal Toxic Release Inventory, her first action was simply to call a lawyer. Formosa Plastics – a Taiwanese company that had been driven from Taipei by a protest of 20,000 people – had built near Lavaca Bay in Calhoun the largest chemical plant in the US, and it was breaking all the rules for legal discharge of toxic wastes.

The lawyer told her to call a meeting, which she did, and that’s hen she set forth on what has since become her life path. "When I first started fighting the corporations," she said, "people thought I was the wrong person for it. After five years I realized I was the perfect one for it because I had the passion to do it. It wasn’t theoretical stuff, it was my flesh and blood."

When legal action against Formosa failed, Wilson went on her first hunger strike; and when that was not enough, she tried to sink her boat in the bay where Formosa discharged its toxic waste. That – and a protest by 200 Vietnamese fisherfolk – finally got Formosa’s attention, and the company agreed to go for zero discharge.

"I truly believe that women are the key to the salvation of this planet, I really do. They have this concept of wholeness. I believe it is the female consciousness that is going to make the difference. Women will be the movement."